PIKNIK: Recipe maker game in a mall

Through our research, we observed that parents found it very difficult to shop with their children, as they became bored and irritated. This irritation would wear down the parents, and create a less than desirable experience for both parent and child. As child safety was a concern for parents, we found a constraint that children needed to remain tethered closely to their parents, and not allowed to roam freely about the store. Our problem space became how to create an engaging, educational experience for children that could alleviate these concerns and make the shopping experience more enjoyable. We brainstormed ten initial designs as a starting point for getting to a potential solution. Out of these, we narrowed down to three strong can- didates which had potential. We investigated each design from angles of cognitive, social, economical, anthropomorphic, and technological feasibility. From feedback and further refinement, we arrived at a final design - PIKNIK. Our final idea was to design and prototype a recipe creation game. This application would be loaded onto a colorful, ergonomic tablet, provided by the store, to enable children to become a virtual chef. The tablet’s interface would allow the child to scan grocery products, view nutritional aspects of those products, and ultimately engaging them in the shop- ping experience. We set out to prototype this idea and gather user feedback through evaluation. From our previous design explorations, we were able to successfully create an engaging design, while keeping in mind many of our user’s requirements and constraints. We then turned our attention to gathering feedback, through user evaluation, of our initial prototype. From some initial feedback, we identified and several us- ability issues in our initial prototype. This allowed us to iterate on our design before continuing with further user evaluation.